The disposal of medical waste is a significant concern from an environmental perspective. Medical waste, which is often infectious, is currently sterilized and relegated to a lifetime in a landfill. Even though many components of medical waste are considered recyclable, these components are not reused for fear of contamination from the infectious materials and the stigma associated with being medical waste and containing infectious matter. This results in the waste of a significant amount of otherwise recyclable materials and occupies valuable space in landfills.
Medical waste can include waste containers, plastics, sharps—both used and unused, broken glass, syringes, rubber components, blood, pathogens, fecal matter and other infectious agents. The medical waste components are usually comingled within a waste container. Sterilization can be carried out by a number of techniques including, but not limited to, autoclaving, gamma irradiating, exposure to ethylene oxide, exposure to microwaves, exposure to radio-frequency waves, and combinations of these techniques. Many of these techniques are not particularly desirable, as they can leave an unpleasant smell, traces of blood may still be seen, and the physical properties of the sterilized plastics can be altered. Therefore, the choice of sterilization technique can have an effect on the resulting sterilized material.
Recycling plastics is a fairly common practice where the plastics are from benign sources. However, plastic comingled with infectious waste typically is not recycled into useful products, especially not into medical devices. U.S. Pat. No. 5,833,922 describes a method for processing medical waste using radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation to obtain reclaimed plastic and refuse-derived fuel, however, there is no description of use of the reclaimed plastic in medical devices other than sharps disposal containers, possibly due to the limited efficacy of using radio-frequency electromagnetic sterilization to sterilize the plastics. It would be desirable to provide more efficient and efficacious methods of separating, sterilizing and reclaiming plastics from plastic comingled with infectious waste. Aside from limitations inherent in the radio-frequency electromagnetic radiation to sterilize plastics comingled and contaminated with infectious waste, there is a lack of coordinated efforts to reclaim and recycle plastics comingled with infectious waste. Thus, while recycling techniques such as the type described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,833,922 exist, it is not believed that such techniques have been used to manufacture medical devices. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide improved systems and methods for the coordination of such reclamation and recycling efforts. Therefore, there is a need to develop methods of recycling infectious medical waste into new medical devices.